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Remember M&M. they were a huge sub were they not? and the jbl 18 that you could buy.. wow...

If brianpdx chimes in on this, keep it a secret that I'm going to go raid his attic, as I think he has a little treasure called a route66 amp that I have drooled over for a while...
my truck is running all brand new gear, but my amp is an old school soundstream rubicon 405 and it still rocks. my evolutions had ppi art series amps. took forever to find ones with mint covers and artwork..

built another system in a truck a long time ago using 2 of the original lanzar opti-50's and man could they rock..
most of my subs over the years were kicker products before they made square. they made some killer stuff back then(and still do)..

and you ask above if this stuff was good quality and worth it's weight in gold? take any of the original "cheater" amps and put them up against todays stuff. almost everyone on this board's amps would melt at a 1/4ohm load, but not that stuff...

maybe some of the industry guys can confirm this, but mmats came on the cheater amp scene later, but I believe they were making hospital equipment first??

there's a vintage stereo shop that a guy opened up here in boise a while back. he's got some real throwbacks..
seems that some of the real high end old home speakers came out of england.
always liked the sound of the old magnapan speakers with the funky mid/high range "drivers" if you can call them that.

Dynaco Stereo 70: beautiful sounding amp and cool just to sit and stare at all glowing and everything. I need to put a new quad cap in the power supply and get a natched set of tubes.

Heathkit vacuum-tube integrated amplifier: Ugly, tired gold face with crummy control knobs, but once you get all the crunchiness out of the volume knob it is sweet!

Heathkit vacuum tube active crossovers: I have two of these, seriously... Blew a few tweeters before I gave up on them, but with new better line-level connections they would work and work well.

I also have some tube integratred amp that my ex-father-in-law gave me. It came out of a barn, but it still works! Don't recall the brand name, but it has this cool crappy rusty look that belies the fact that it still sounds great.

A little treatsie on how the center channel speaker came into being.

Way beack in the day, when they were running those really wide cinemascope films, the theaters were much bigger and wider than they are today. When stereo came along, the folks sitting down front, way to the left or the right got weird sound from the speaker in front of them. Movie theaters added center channel speakers that just played the sum of the left and the right channel, to help "steer" the ear back to the center of the screen, just for these folks who were down front, but way to the left or the right.

Along comes surround sound, Dolby surround, 4.1, 5.1, and we got to where we are today... With that pesky irritating center speaker. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my living room, there is no equivalent to sitting down front, way to the right or to the left. I maintain there is little or no need for a center channel speaker.

A properly set up 2-channel stereo system can very realistically convey a uniform "stage" of sound from outside left, to center, to outside right. It can do this for a good number of seating locations in an average living room.

For my crazy eclectic set up in my house, I have an older Carver preamp tuner, driving a Carver amp, connected through a Hughes SRS device. The speakers are home built, left overs from when I was a designer for Advent... (another cool old vintage brand).... NO center spekaer, and it sounds just fine.

I agree with what someone mentioned elsewhere, the good old stereo sound system is an art lost on a generation or two.... To colose your eyes and "see" someone singing from in front of you, when there is no transducer there to create the sound is a marvelous thing!

Celestion

I have a Celestion AD12 Subwoofer. New back in mid-90's.
I recently contacted the corporate offices over the pond and this was my questions:

"I have a Celestion AD 12 car audio subwoofer that I have had since around 1995. I have never used it because I have never had the exact specifications for the perfect enclosure to use it.
Just found it in storage and would like to build an enclosure to use it.
Please advise as to the type of enclosure (ported, sealed, free-air, ect...) and how big an amplifier I should run in an car-audio scenerio."

This was the answer:

"The AD12 works best in a small volume of around 40 litres tuned low to 35Hz with a vent of 76mm diameter and length 230mm. The power handling is around 300W but ideally the amp should be bigger to avoid distortion and give lots of headroom. The biggest you can afford would probably be best!
Regards
The Doc"

I was going to try and stuff this bohemuth in my outback but decided I may try and squeeze it in my duramax instead since it's taking up space in my garage. It's a monster

It's been awhile since I've poked around in my Attic but seems to me that I've one each of all the limited edition amps we've made in the early years.

FrankAmpNStein
Sonof FrankAmp
I dont think I ever grabbed the MS1000.
I've Reactor S#100 which was the last one made. That was a cool amp.

Of course I've got Vikings R66. S#1 or 2. Did you know that we had such fun with that amp that we even had our metal shop cut R66 drink holder / coasters complete with silk screening and powder coating and cork backsides? (talk about cool).

Just recently, I came across an Original prototype of "Cyclone" the rotational subwoofer that we spent god knows how much money on back in the day. that woofer was so cool because you could actually watch a 14HZ note being reproduced thru the plexiglass chamber.....hehe

With that pesky irritating center speaker. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my living room, there is no equivalent to sitting down front, way to the right or to the left. I maintain there is little or no need for a center channel speaker.

A properly set up 2-channel stereo system can very realistically convey a uniform "stage" of sound from outside left, to center, to outside right.

Come to my home and watch "The Matrix", it's an old film, but the digital quality of video and audio are still one of the tops IMO. It becomes very clear how the center channel and 5.1 work to create "realistic" sound. Whatever realistic would be if you were in a helicopter, shooting a mini-gun, and jumping to save someone.